I hated to fly clear to the west coast on what might be a wild-goose chase, but I did.  I couldn’t afford to run the risk of losing an opportunity to turn that old recurrent rumor into fact.

Twenty hours later I met the two people at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  We talked for several hours that night, and I got the details on the rumor and a lot more that I hadn’t bargained for.  Both of my informants were physicists working for the Atomic Energy Commission, and were recognized in their fields.  They wanted no publicity and I promised them that they would get none.  One of the men knew all the details behind the rumor, and did most of the talking.  To keep my promise of no publicity, I’ll call him the “scientist.”

The rumor version of the UFO-radiation story that had been kicking around in Air Force and scientific circles for so long had been correct in detail but it was by no means complete.  The scientist said that after the initial sighting had taken place word was spread at the research lab that the next time the instruments registered abnormal amounts of radiation, some of the personnel were to go outside immediately and look for some object in the sky.

About three weeks after the first incident a repetition did occur.  While excessive radiation was registering on the instruments in the lab, a lone dark object was seen streaking across the sky.  Again the instruments were checked but, as before, no malfunction was found.

After this second sighting, according to the scientist, an investigation was started at the laboratory.  The people who made the visual observations weren’t sure that the object they had seen couldn’t have been an airplane.  Someone thought that perhaps some type of radar equipment in the airplane, if that’s what the object was, might have affected the radiation-detection equipment.  So arrangements were made to fly all types of aircraft over the area with their radar in operation.  Nothing unusual happened.  All possible types of airborne research equipment were traced during similar flights in the hope that some special equipment not normally carried in aircraft would be found to have caused the jump in radiation.  But nothing out of the ordinary occurred during these tests either.

It was tentatively concluded, the scientist continued, that the abnormally high radiation readings were “officially” due to some freakish equipment malfunction and that the objects sighted visually were birds or airplanes.  A report to this effect was made to military authorities, but since the conclusion stated that no flying saucers were involved, the report went into some unknown file.  Project Blue Book never got it.

Shortly after the second UFO-radiation episode the research group finished its work.  It was at this time that the scientist had first become aware of the incidents he related to me.  A friend of his, one of the men involved in the sightings, had sent the details in a letter.